Hrm. Wow. I only made it through about half of that. He's fudging somewhat to get us to the conclusion that he has clearly reached (nothing more to learn in LEO) and that it would be "fairly easy" to retrofit it for interplanetary (!!!) travel.

It is an interesting idea, but I suspect that any engineers that read and post here would punch a million practical holes in it.

But aside from the engineering, I disagree with the premise that we have figured out how to combat the effects of weightlessness. He doesn't even mention radiation (unless he does on page 2... didn't get there). I also disagree that that is the ISS's sole function anyway, at least as it is ultimately envisioned. There's plenty of work to be done up there with materials and bio-medical science that benefit not just astronauts but the rest of us down here. We just have to get it up to that 6 person crew (next year).

Well, one hole to punch, anyhow (although I like the idea, too!) I guess that you could fly the ISS to the Moon pretty easily but not rapidly with an ion engine, and to Mars with much more difficulty from a logistics standpoint. I'm concerned about the crew's radiation exposure in either scenario, though. Right now, it's below the Van Allen belts and relatively protected. We'd need to add a pretty heavy radiation shelter for solar flares at the very least, and not at all sure how rad-hardened the rest of the station systems are for such events.

Another concern is how many of the extant station experiments are designed to examine the LEO environment for commercial applications? (Kibo springs to mind.) Going outside of the Van Allen regions would invalidate such results, and presumably tick off the investigators.

Other than that...Putting it around the Moon might be a good idea. It could serve as a gateway, a transfer point from an Orion transfer vehicle to a hopefully reusable ISS-to-ground shuttle (using LOX produced in situ at a base site). Sounds cost-effective to me, if practical: more hardware reuse, less overall boost mass from Earth to the Moon. Plus, of course, the right instruments could provide an extremely detailed survey of the Moon at any wavelength you want...

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A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.

Incidentally - thermally, I would expect the environment at LEO compared to anywhere else, with half the 'sky' being full of a warm blue marble, to be significantly different requiring non-trival modifications to ISS. Power wise, you've going to need twice the solar arrays if you take it to Mars. We're 4 months from Zarya being 10 years old. Mir lasted 14 years as a crewed vehicle. The author of that article has written a book I once flicked through. I find it hard to believe it's the same guy.

Good point, and "non-trivial" might be an understatement, unless you put it in like an 80 km lunar orbit with attendant fuel requirements for orbit maintenance. Does the ISS even have heat pipes now, or is the sheer volume of the structure enough to dissipate the current thermal load each orbit?

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A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.

I know that technically it's about as practical as using dog farts to propel a nuclear submarine into orbit, but as the Forum's lone Hopeless Romantic I have to say I find the image of the ISS sliping free of Earth orbit and setting sail for worlds beyond almost too beautiful for words...

The reactions here are more in response to the guy's article, not your romantic thoughts.

Slight tangent, but I can't wait until the crew size doubles next year so that the station can get down to doing what it's supposed to be doing. Then everyone could be happy (unless you want a trip to the moon, of course).

Oh...I get the image, believe me (you know me that well, at least! ) Just tryin' to think of a way to make it work, is all, and the first step is to ask really annoying 'what-if'-type questions. Got this stupid engineering degree, may as well try to use it a bit.

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A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.

Someone please check the numbers on that - they may well be orders of magnitude off - but they do, to me at least, seem to be in the right sort of 'bloody stupid idea' ball park.

Your fuel mass is by far too much. Using the rocket equation yields something different (maybe you mixed up v_ex with Isp? v_ex = Isp * g0). To achieve a delta-v of 4.1 km/s with chemical propulsion you would need ~3 times the mass of ISS of fuel, thus ~1,200 tons. With electric engines as supposed just around 550 tons. Quite alot, but feasible.

Someone please check the numbers on that - they may well be orders of magnitude off - but they do, to me at least, seem to be in the right sort of 'bloody stupid idea' ball park.

Given delta_v 4100 m/s, exhaust velocity of v_e=Isp*g=390*9.8=3800 m/s, the amount of propellant needed is m = m0*(exp(delta_v/v_e)-1)=814 tons. Ignoring the weight of the propellant tanks and rocket engines and millions other engineering problems, this is just 7 or 8 Saturn 5 launches!

I have a better idea. Let's fit an ion-thruster to this guy's car, and use it for MSR. And please spare me the technical difficulties. The car already has seat belts, we 'll use sun lotion and raybans for radiation protection, and there is plenty of space in the back for soil samples. We 're in business baby !

I have a better idea. Let's fit an ion-thruster to this guy's car, and use it for MSR. And please spare me the technical difficulties. The car already has seat belts, we 'll use sun lotion and raybans for radiation protection, and there is plenty of space in the back for soil samples. We 're in business baby !

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